


Right Before the First

by murderofporgs



Series: Flammable Materials [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Cuddling, Exhaustion, First Kiss, M/M, Pining, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Post-TLJ, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, porgs ex machina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 08:04:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13290612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murderofporgs/pseuds/murderofporgs
Summary: Poe wakes up in theMillennium Falcon's forward cargo hold with no memory of how he ended up there, wrapped around Finn. Poe knows that he's going to have to deal with all of this sooner or later and that he's not quite ready yet, Finn knows that he needs to figure out the rules of social interaction outside of the First Order, and there are porgs in the sublight engines.





	Right Before the First

**Right Before the First**

 

There’s a soft hum, not quite a vibration but almost, and Poe can feel it deep in his bones as awareness starts to seep in. This is nice, he reflects without opening his eyes. The surface he’s lying on is hard and it should be uncomfortable, but he also seems to be pressed up against someone warm. Someone is human-shaped and smells like sweat and blood and ash and salt. Someone is breathing very close to his ear.  

 

“Are you awake?” Someone asks. “It’d be great if you were, ‘cause I kinda need to use the fresher.” 

 

Poe makes an attempt to blink his eyes open and gets about halfway. Oh.  _ Finn _ . This is  _ really  _ nice. Poe turns his head a little, makes a lazy sweep of his surroundings. If he’s not entirely mistaken, they’re lying on the deck in the forward cargo hold of the Millennium Falcon and he has absolutely no memory of how he ended up here.

 

He remembers talking to Leia about something when all of a sudden every word out of her mouth started to sound like gibberish. When he asked her to say it again in Basic, her voice had taken on a concerned tone and then seemed to come from very far away and after that it’s pretty much blank. 

 

“Poe?”

 

“Mmhm.” That was supposed to be a word. Poe wets his lips and tries again. “Yeah. ‘m ‘wake.” Kriff, is that his voice? He sounds wrecked.

 

“ _ Fantastic _ , if you could just… your arm, there, thanks.” There is a certain amount of moving happening and Poe isn’t doing much of it, it’s mostly Finn trying to get out from… under him?  “Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.”

 

Going anywhere isn’t really an option so Poe just stays where he is and tries to make sense of the situation. All right. At some point between that conversation with Leia and now, he ended up on the cargo hold deck, wrapped around Finn. There’s probably a very good explanation and he has no reason whatsoever to panic. He just needs to wake up properly and it’ll all come back to him.

 

Trying to get up feels like a very bad idea. Poe isn’t entirely certain  _ why _ , just that he shouldn’t attempt it. Instead he just rolls over on his back and, ow, that’s one hell of a headache. Was he drinking last night or...

 

He manages to get his eyes all the way open. It’s possible he might’ve hit his head a few too many times in the past week. 

 

The past week. 

 

It all comes rushing back in then with a sense of loss so profound he can’t breathe for a moment. All the people they’ve lost. All the people he got killed. The entire Resistance, small enough to fit on the  _ Falcon _ . Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are both gone.

 

Poe never had a chance to get to know Skywalker much. He visited once or twice when Poe was very young, to see Mom and check up on the tree in their backyard. Han Solo he did know, at least a little bit. Dad served with Solo during the battle of Endor, Mom flew with Leia at Naboo. Both of them were frequent guests on Yavin IV, way back when Mom was still alive. He remembers the adults sitting out on the deck Dad built, drinking chilled teka out of tiny ceramic cups while Poe got stuck entertaining Ben. 

 

Okay, he’s not going to think about that anymore. Stick it in a box, put it away.

 

There are hurried steps in the corridor outside the hold and Poe isn’t sure if he’s imagining it, but somehow he already knows those steps. Finn appears in the bulkhead door, all broad shoulders and slim waist and  _ hips,  _ so gorgeous it’s taking Poe’s breath away.  _ Come on Dameron, get your mind out of the gutter, there’s something you’re supposed to be remembering. _

 

“Rose?” he croaks. For some reason, Finn went from keeping a bedside vigil over Rose Tico to letting himself be forcefully cuddled by Poe. Hopefully the reason won’t add to the hollow sensation inside Poe’s ribcage. If he loses one more person right now...

 

Finn goes down to one knee beside him and beams, bright and blindingly beautiful. “She’s going to be okay. Concussion and a couple of broken bones, but nothing that won’t heal. She woke up long enough to tell me it’s creepy to watch people sleep. I was coming to tell you, but you’d sort of just passed out on General Organa and she asked me to move you somewhere you could lie down properly. All the bunks were taken, but in here it was quiet at least.”

 

Poe doesn’t remember that. Then again, he also doesn’t remember the last time he actually  _ slept _ , so maybe that’s the explanation right there. “How long was I out?” he asks, desperate to get some sort of timeline established.    

 

“Um… six standard hours or so?” Finn’s forehead scrunches up in thought. “I was just going to leave you alone and let you sleep, but then you started shivering and there weren’t any blankets left, so I thought… body heat?” 

 

Stellar travel gets cold, nothing but a ship’s hull between you and the open emptiness of space. On top of that, they need to conserve resources until they know that they actually have somewhere to  _ go _ , and a comfy temperature is pretty low on the list of what they need to spend power on. Still, it means that Finn spent the past six hours keeping Poe’s pathetic ass warm when he probably had better things to do.

 

“That’s… you didn’t have to do that, buddy.”

 

“Oh, I don’t mind, I’m used to it. The First Order weren’t that concerned with keeping troopers comfortable. Man, those barracks could be  _ freezing _ .” Finn looks like he wants to shiver a bit himself at the memory and it makes Poe want to go blow something up. “Anyway, you woke up and drank some water a couple of hours ago. I mean, your eyes were open but I don’t think you were really  _ awake _ . After that you just sort of… latched onto me and wouldn’t let go?”

 

Oh, hell  _ no _ . Of all the people in the galaxy....

 

“Sorry about that,” Poe mutters, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing them to try to get his vision to clear. He needs to  _ wake up _ , damnit. “It’s something I do, apparently.”

 

The first time he and Karé had to bunk down together on a mission, she’d almost broken his nose before she realized that he was actually  _ asleep  _ and honestly hadn’t meant to grope her. Since then, most his friends have gotten used to him being a sleep-limpet. Iolo and Jess usually lets him cuddle, Karé elbows him in the ribs and tells him to fuck off, and Snap refuses to bunk with him on principle.

 

Force, Poe hopes they are still alive. They were all off on recon missions during the evacuation of D’qar, gathering intel on the current state of the New Republic.

 

Finn parks his ass on the deck, leaning back against a loading crate. Now that he’s closer, Poe can make out the smudge of a bruise on his cheek, and a few scabbed over cuts from the speeder crash. One more thing Poe isn’t going to examine too closely right now because he’s pretty sure it’s going to send him straight into a full-blown panic attack and Finn shouldn’t have to deal with  _ that  _ on top of everything.

 

“That’s okay,” Finn says. “I kinda needed to lie down too, to be honest, and once I knew Rose was going to be fine…” He stops, seems to be considering something. “Is it? Creepy to watch people sleep, I mean. I never had much chance to reflect on that and now I just realized I did it to you as well.”

 

“Depends on the person you’re watching,” Poe answers. “Some people aren’t comfortable with it. I don’t care either way.”

 

Finn nods to himself. “Right. That’s good to know. I guess it’s going to take me a while to, you know, figure out all the rules.”

 

“I don’t know if there even are rules anymore,” Poe says. It’s getting to be awkward having this conversation with Finn while flat on his back, so he rolls up on his elbow and makes an attempt to sit up and...

 

All right,  _ that’s  _ why he shouldn’t be trying to move around.

 

He’s known, in a sort of distant way, that he’s been hurting all over, but he’s also been running on adrenaline and terror since, well, Jakku probably. Now, after the inevitable crash, he’s starting to feel all kinds of things again, none of them pleasant.

 

When he can finally see again and he’s managed to get a decent breath down his lungs, Finn is leaning over him, tugging on his shirt. Poe tries to bat his hands away, because Finn really doesn’t need to see the tapestry of bruises that is his upper body at the moment. 

 

“Poe! I thought you said that med droid checked you over!”

 

“Nothing’s broken,” Poe wheezes. The droid had said so much. He’d been given a pain relief stim and no-one had stopped him when he got up to leave. Possibly because everyone had been too busy saving the General’s life to pay much attention to beat up hotshot flyboys. 

 

“I’m going to see if I can find you any painkillers. Stars, Poe, I let you sleep on the  _ deck _ .” 

 

“Had a pretty good pillow though,” Poe’s mouth says without his leave and he promptly wants to bang his head on the nearest hard surface. Damn, what’s  _ wrong  _ with him? “No, really, I’m alright, just stiff and sore. Besides, we need to take proper inventory before we start doling out the good drugs for simple bruises. Save them for the people who really need them, like Rose.”

 

Finn sits back on his haunches, looking doubtful. Poe pulls his shirt closed again, wincing as the movement jars his ribs. They might not have been broken before, but now he’s actually not so sure. Not that he’s going to tell Finn that, of course. 

 

“Some of those looked a couple of days old,” Finn says.

 

“Oh. Yeah, I guess. You probably remember that crash, you were in it.”

 

“And the rest? Are all of those from the hangar explosion?”

 

“Um. Pretty much. And from when Leia shot me.”

 

“General Organa  _ shot  _ you?” Finns eyebrows shoot up almost all the way to his hairline and Poe takes another moment to curse his uncooperative mouth. He hadn’t meant to say that.

 

“Well, she stunned me.” Poe shrugs, as well as he can. “I kinda deserved it. I think I actually went a little crazy there for a bit.”  _ Damnit, mouth, stop  _ saying  _ things. _

 

He’s going to have to deal with all this at some point, he knows. Everything from what happened on the  _ Finalizer  _ to the way his lungs seized when Finn decided to make that suicide run on Crait. Right now though, he’s not going to think about it. If he does, he really  _ will  _ go crazy. Instead, he holds out an arm to Finn.

 

“Help me up.”

 

“I’m not sure I should do that,” Finn says, but he takes Poes hand and just holds it. His palm is big and very warm, his fingers curled loosely around Poes own.

 

“No, I just need to get up and move around a bit, I’ll feel a lot better.” 

 

Finn doesn’t seem convinced, but he does move to brace Poe’s side and helps him climb to his feet. There’s a moment of lightheadedness where Poe is afraid he’s going to end up right back on the floor, but Finn lets him lean and takes his weight until it passes. Hm. He should probably try to find something to eat.

 

“Everyone’s been telling me the Resistance treats their people well”, Finn says, still with that trace of doubt in his voice. Poe looks up, notes that Finn is actually a little bit taller than him, crowding him in a way that should make him feel wary but doesn’t, and also that their faces are very close together. He can see the the stubble coming in on Finn’s upper lip, the way his eyes are a little bit bloodshot, like he could really use a few more hours of sleep. There’s a bit of trepidation in those eyes, as if he’s wondering if he should’ve made different decisions instead of the ones that brought him here.

 

Poe knows how this looks. If he’d been one of his own pilots, he wouldn’t have been flying the Takodana mission. He probably wouldn’t have been flying Starkiller either, although by the time they got around to the evacuation, things were desperate enough that they’d needed everyone in the air, bruises and exhaustion be damned. 

 

Thing is, Poe isn’t one of the pilots under his command. He’s Poe Dameron, best pilot in the Resistance, and he doesn’t get to be anything else than fine. He puts both his hands on Finn’s shoulders, frantic to reassure him that he didn’t leave the First Order just to join up with another bunch of assholes who’ll use him until he’s spent and then throw him aside.

 

“No, Finn, no. They do. We  _ do _ . This has just been a really shitty week and I’ve had… a lot on my mind.” Poe feels like laughing, but it would be the wrong kind of laughter so he pushes it down. “I might not be so good at looking after myself is all. If we can spare it, I’ll take something, just… this is nothing that won’t heal anyway.”

 

Finn chuckles a little. “All right, I believe you.” He looks down, clearly remembering something because it makes his brow furrow, and when he meets Poe’s eye again, he looks amused. “You know, I was actually a very good Stormtrooper.”

 

He’s going somewhere with this, so Poe decides not to question it, just nods and says, “Is that so?”

 

“Yep,  _ really  _ good. Top marks in everything as long as it was just training. But I had this one flaw, that I couldn’t seem to shake, and that was empathy. They kept telling me that like it was a bad thing. It was going to get me reconditioned, and that’s why I decided to rescue you. So I was a really good Stormtrooper, but I’m also pretty good at looking after people and I guess that’s what makes me… you know, me.” He looks down again and laughs a little, and that is the right laughter, it’s the  _ perfect  _ laughter. “I never got to be a me before. I never got to be a person.”

 

“I think you’re pretty great person already,” Poe’s mouth says, and that’s a sentence Poe can’t bring himself to regret uttering, because of the way it makes Finn smile.

 

“Look, when I said I’d have to figure out the rules, um. Can I try something? It might be weird.”

 

“I’m good with weird,” Poe says. After a speech like that, he probably couldn’t deny Finn a thing anyway so he might as well go along with it.

 

He’s not at all prepared when Finn leans in to kiss him, dry and close-mouthed, just their lips brushing together, but it’s everything Poe has wanted since after Takodana, when he realized that Finn was  _ alive  _ and not a broken pile of bones in the Jakku desert. He closes his eyes, prepared to move into it, open his lips and lick into Finn’s mouth, search out the hot wet heat there and…

Finn pulls away before Poe has time to do any of those things, and maybe that’s for the best, because he looks a little bewildered. He licks his lips, just a hint of pink tongue that Poe can’t take his eyes off of. “Huh,” Finn says, as if to himself. “That was different.”

 

_ Different how? _ Poe wants to ask, but just then they’re rudely interrupted when Rey pops her head through the door.

 

“Finn, there you are! You need to help me get the porg nest out of the sublight engines or they’re going to explode and kill us all once we get out of hyperspace.”

 

Finn turns his head, smiles at her, and there’s a nasty part of Poe’s mind that churns with jealousy. He pushes it down, because Rey is Finn’s friend and she saved all of their lives and he can’t bring himself to dislike her.

 

“I’ll be right there,” Finn tells her and then turns back to Poe. “Are you going to be okay? I need to…”

 

Poe waves him off. “I’m fine, go save us from impending disaster by way of porgs.” 

 

Finn’s bright laugher trails after him as he exits the cargo hold and Poe staggers back to let the bulkhead take some weight off of his weak knees, runs a finger over his lips to chase the sensation of that kiss. 

 

He is so very screwed.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I will go down with this ship. That doesn't mean I will tolerate any bad words about Rey or Rose because they are my girls and I will defend them to the end. 
> 
> 2\. I actually do know where I'm going with this. Please bear with me.
> 
> 3\. English is not my first language and I don't have a beta for the moment. I won't be mad if you point out my errors.
> 
> 4\. If it's not in the films, the Poe Dameron comics or on Wookieepedia, I made it up.


End file.
